Joined in November 2022
Based in New York, NYGrowing up in Florida, family vacations often meant Disney or a cruise for Randy Marsden. As an adult, his interest in travel never went away. He spent years running his own healthcare technology business, and found himself organizing conference bookings for his clients. Then he realized he could be earning money from those trips.
His first move was joining a host agency. Randy knew how to build and run a company, but he needed to learn how to be a travel advisor. He quickly found booking personal travel is very different from booking full itineraries for clients. But the agency handed him an IATA number and a supplier list and left the rest to him: no connections, no experts to coach him, and little human support. An ad for Fora and an initial call convinced him to make the switch. “Within six months at Fora, I had four times the business I had at my old agency,” Randy said. He credits that difference to the quality of Fora’s training and the depth of its advisor community.
When he sold his healthcare business, he committed to travel advising full time. After spending time on Fora’s HQ team to help build out cruise resources, he’s back as an independent advisor and doubling down on his specialty.
Strong foundational training
Randy didn’t plan to become a cruise specialist. He originally set out to focus on Disney, a destination he knew inside out. Then he sailed on Virgin Voyages on a whim and recognized the same mix he loved about Disney bookings: complex enough that clients need guidance, immersive enough that they remember the experience for years. That sailing changed his business plan.
As he went deeper into cruise, it became clear that most training in the industry assumes you already know the product. Cruise lines build their learning programs for advisors who are already familiar with the category and just need to understand a specific brand. Industry organizations like CLIA go deeper, but they’re more focused on sales strategy than the basics.
Fora has built a curriculum that works for advisors who have never set foot on a ship—which, Randy points out, describes a lot of people who turn out to be great at selling cruise. “Fora’s training is more than enough—more than most host agencies give you,” he said.
Randy helped Fora design cruise education for advisors at every booking level
In addition to cruise training, Fora’s platform offers hundreds of live and on-demand courses, plus a community app where advisors exchange knowledge, contacts, and client tips.
Community that works both ways
Randy built his initial client base by becoming the most useful person in online communities, answering questions on Reddit and Facebook without leading with a sales pitch. “You just have to be the expert, and people will ask you what you do,” he said. That approach, borrowed from years of navigating healthcare industry spaces where overt promotion wasn’t welcome, turned out to translate perfectly to travel.
Inside Fora, a different kind of community shaped his travel career. Early exposure to other cruise advisors pushed him to expand beyond Virgin Voyages to a broader range of lines, something he says wouldn’t have happened as quickly on his own.
That experience made him want to bring others into the category. Randy became one of Fora’s first cruise ambassadors, working with advisors who wanted to break in. What he repeatedly encountered were talented advisors who’d written off cruise without ever trying it, assuming it wasn’t for them or their clients. That assumption, he says, is almost always wrong.
“Saying you’d never go on a cruise is like saying you’d never stay at a hotel,” he said. There’s just as much range, and just as much opportunity. Getting advisors on board often just required getting them on a ship—he watched people who’d sworn off cruise return from Fam trips completely converted.
Saying you’d never go on a cruise is like saying you’d never stay at a hotel.
Randy Marsden
joined November 2022Anchoring business growth in cruise
The bigger lesson Randy has drawn from years of cruise advising is that the cruise itself is just the start of a client relationship, and that relationship is what compounds. His approach to bookings is to lead with the anchor—the cruise—and layer in everything else in consultation with his client: flights, hotels before and after, excursions, insurance. Clients who get the full picture without sales pressure trust you with all of it, and are more likely to come back the next time they’re planning any trip.
He’s been surprised how rare this still is. On a past sailing, Randy ran into a top cruise seller he admires and found she handled almost nothing beyond the cruise booking itself. Every cruise advisor knows to get your client to the port city at least one day before departure, so a delayed or canceled flight can’t cost them the sailing, but far fewer treat that night as an upsell opportunity. The point isn’t the extra commission: recommending the pre-cruise stay is simply best practice that gives the client—and the advisor—peace of mind.
Randy’s advice to anyone thinking about growth: Look at every port on a typical itinerary, find one hotel in each city to build a relationship with, and start there. It’s straightforward commission cruise-only advisors are leaving on the table, and another reason for a client to come back to you.
That client trust is what makes the harder moments possible. On an annual Pride Month sailing to Montenegro, a friend and client asked Randy to help him propose at the top of a mountain above Kotor. The ship was tendering into port, so the whole group of 20 had to make the first tender ashore to have any window at all, and a time zone change shaved another hour off the plan. Randy rebuilt the timeline, got everyone onto that first tender and into cars, and made it to the summit with minutes to spare, just in time to watch his friend get down on one knee. “You’re helping your clients make memories. That’s what makes the tough parts worth it,” he said.
How Fora made success possible
Fora’s training and community give cruise-focused advisors a foundation that many host agencies don’t offer:
Training: Fora’s curriculum starts from the ground up, giving new advisors baseline education before they tackle supplier-specific materials.
Community: A network of experienced advisors and industry experts share knowledge, answer questions, and help others build confidence.
Premier CLIA membership: Fora’s status means reduced fees and bonus commissions that can cover membership within one or two bookings.
Hotel and land bookingFora’s hotel program and preferred partner network make it easy to extend a cruise into a full trip with pre- and post-cruise stays, excursions, and more, so a single cruise booking naturally grows into a complete itinerary.
